


Gone But Not Forgotten

by ImhereImQuire



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Gen, Grief, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 05:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImhereImQuire/pseuds/ImhereImQuire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post NiC Narcissus confides in his dead friend. Character death is canon, so no real surprises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone But Not Forgotten

Narcissus stood looking vaguely windswept, skirt blowing in the breeze. It was late afternoon, leaning towards evening, but he was in no hurry. He simply wanted to be here, to catch up with an old friend without any interruption.

“Alright, go on. You can laugh.” he said after a long period of silence, sitting down and resting his back about the stone and setting the bottle at his side, legs stuck out in front of him, crossed at the ankle. Even when drunk Narcissus maintained a certain degree of sophistication, a lazy glamour as he raised the half empty bottle of vodka to his lips, taking another deep swig, any burn he might have felt that morning long since diminished. It was little more than water to him now.

“The baby’s gone.” Again the oppressive silence loomed. “Shift before last.” he supplied in explanation. “I would have come out to see you before but it’s been…chaotic” he stared out at the trees, the stones, the afternoon sun. “’Chaotic’? It’s been… hell.” he admitted, sighing and searching in his bag, taking out a shiny silver mirror compact and setting it upon his lap before pulling out a small glass vial and a gold straw. “I know how you feel about ‘medicine’ but give me a break, I’ve had a rough few months. It’s keeping me together, so I don’t need a lecture from you. Can’t have the Oba having a breakdown after all, can we?” he tipped out a small pile of the white powder onto the mirror and re-corked the vial once more, letting it rest in the valley of his skirt before putting the cylinder to his nose and sniffing.

“Oh how the fucking mighty have fallen, hmm?” he asked when he was quite finished his snorting, resting his cheek upon one palm. “Everything I said about her, how she was only using you? That she was completely psychotic and going to drag you down with her? Well… that bit was true, come to think of it.” he cast a haughty glance over his shoulder. “I warned you she was a crazy bitch, didn’t I? So you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.” he paused, guilt setting in after a few moments.

“But that’s the last time I’ll say it. I swear I will never raise the point again. I can’t. So it’s over between us, that one. Because she might have been crazy, she might have been fucked up beyond the telling …but she did love you, didn’t she? You were right on that one. She didn’t turn on you, that’s one thing that cannot be said of mega bitch.” He sniffed again slightly and this time it had nothing to do with the powder up his nasal cavities. “More than could be said of Chimera. Bastard. Fucking, two faced —ha hah hah, did you see what I did there?- “ his laughter was cut off, forced as though he was attempting hysteria, but couldn’t quite work up the energy. It sounded like someone at that level of pain between beyond crying, trying to keep from screaming.

At least he'd thought he was beyond tears, but the choked up noise when he took a deep breath was quite clearly a sob even to his own ears and he realised with some surprise that his cheeks were wet. “Good job my mascara is waterproof, isn’t it, darling? I could have been employed as a tester, last couple of months. Chimera. Motherfucker. Last time I read you the letters he’d been sending me, didn’t I? He didn’t write them. He had one of his leopards do it. He...fucker. Bastard. Cunt. Gods!” he took a deep breath, and pulled a tissue from his bag, wiping his eyes and taking another deep breath. “I’m going to look like a morose mime artist panda at this rate” he sighed, curling up in preparation. Confession time, he supposed.

“He screwed me over, darling. Not in the ‘mate and run’ sense. You think I’d cry over that? Please. What do you take me for? No,” he swallowed thickly. “In the never really loved me at all, was using me the entire time to get his paws on my throne and my boys, chained and tortured me sort of way” he shook his head “And no, for your information not in the good way, asshole.”

“We are not talking fun and games here, Gabe.” he swallowed, feeling far too vulnerable as he continued quietly “If you simply must know Chimera held me prisoner for I don’t even know how many days in a fucking freezer, sawed off my hands and took a scalpel to my eyes.” he rocked slightly, against the stone at his back, feeling a cold that was nothing to do with the dip of the sun under the horizon.

“Yes. While I was carrying his baby. Our baby” he swallowed thickly, silent for a long time before he suddenly snapped. “My baby, it was my baby. I thought he’d killed her. Thought he was going to kill me, but by that time I almost didn’t care. My little girl. Dead. Oh yes. I knew it was a little girl, or would be. Don’t ask me why, I simply did. Aphrodite. I was going to call her Aphrodite. Ditty for short, perhaps, if I got to that horrible, horrible habit mothers have for bastardising the name of their offspring...” he was shaken from his tangent by a raw, choked little sound that he didn’t recognise at first as his own. “My little Aphrodite. My baby. My little one. I thought he’d killed her. But no, somehow she managed to cling to her life, my little miracle,” he was sobbing openly now, and with the head rush of the coke he’d done in the cab, and before he could barely even feel the tears upon his cheeks.

“But he didn’t kill our baby.” Narcissus laugh was a barking, bitter sound, so much changed from his usual flowing and silken chuckle. More broken. “I did. I crushed her little body to death when I shifted. I killed her.” he drew his knees up, resting his head back against the stone, trying to breathe, feeling suddenly smothered. “So… so many have died because of me. Ajax, Ulysses, Pythagoras, Beta, Icarus, Guilio, Dorcas…” each name drew a sharp hiccuping cry from him until he had to stop and take another deep swig of spirits before he could speak again, his voice died to the hoarse and empty monotone of one who had cried too many tears and had no more to give.

“There were more. So, so many more, because I was too naïve and too blind to realise that I was being played with. I thought I’d met my mate.” He turned around, tracing the letters of his friend’s grave with a chipped-polished nail, forehead pressed against the cold stone. “I miss you, Gabriel,” he whispered finally, “I still miss you, even though you brought it all on yourself. Why did you have to go and die on me?”


End file.
